Anthony Daly: Despite Limerick’s dominance, we’re lucky in hurling to have so much intrigue
JOLLY GREEN GIANT: Kyle Hayes celebrates with the Liam MacCarthy Cup after Limerick’s All-Ireland SHC final mauling of Cork at Croke Park in August.
When I look back on the 2021 hurling season from a personal perspective, I have some regrets. At the start of the year, I agreed to coach Sarsfields in Galway, that great club based in Bullaun and New Inn, the first to win back-to-back All-Irelands.
They are the most genuine people you could ever coach, a super bunch of players and an incredible group of people working in the background. Every night before I’d leave after training and hit for home, Mary Fox the secretary would have my cup of coffee ready for the road.
The first part of the season was difficult because of the lockdown and trying to connect with players and management through Zoom and phone calls that went on half the night. But once we got the clearance to go back training, I really enjoyed being out on the pitch again with the whistle in my mouth.
The Galway championship is not an easy one to win but I had big ambitions for us. I felt we were going well but the first problems began for me early in the summer when we reopened our pub Murty Browne’s and I was forced to miss three successive Saturday evenings with Sarsfields.
A lot of pubs in Clare couldn’t open because they didn’t have the outdoor facilities to cater for their customers, but we had a big carpark out the back which gave us the opportunity to develop outdoor seating. With the weather so good and the goodwill of the public so strong, I was needed more in the bar — even with extra staffing — than I thought I would be at weekends.
With my commitments to the Sunday Game and the on Saturdays and Sundays, something had to give. And, unfortunately, it had to be Sarsfields.
It broke my heart to ring Joe ‘Jackson’ McGrath and tell him that I could no longer commit to their cause. In my own head, I was trying to rearrange everything to find a way. I could have tried but I’d only have been codding them when I couldn’t give them everything I’d promised them, which is only what any club you commit to fully deserves.
Even when I had gone from the job, I still found myself watching their results like a hawk. I really wanted Sarsfields to do well but they eventually went out of the championship in heartbreaking circumstances — on scoring differences after a late missed penalty. I may not have been involved that afternoon in Duggan Park Ballinasloe, but I was there in spirit.
I found it all very disappointing because I felt I let people down, which was never my intention. If I had any inkling what was coming, I would never have agreed to go up there in the first place. But life doesn’t always follow a linear narrative.
The whole experience also reminded me of the personal investment we all make when committing to a cause now. I saw it myself for the few short months I was in Sarsfields — the volume of work involved, the time, the professionalism, the honesty and sincerity of the players.
Inter-county level is a whole new level again, but the last two years have made us all appreciate what we have even more. I think we all respect and value players even more — at club and county level — for the joy and happiness and entertainment they have provided to so many in such difficult times.
One of the highlights of the season for me was just being at the All-Ireland final in September. The game was a let-down, a wash-out for a finish, but that the whole day was about much more than just the outcome. The parade alone, and the noise which boomed around Croke Park that afternoon was like a loud exhalation, a guttural roar that proudly declared: ‘We’re back, thank God, we’re back.’
It was a million miles away from last December and the emptiness, silence, and eeriness of the whole occasion without supporters. With the new RTÉ TV podium just at the corner of the Hogan Stand and Hill 16, the Limerick supporters were sewing it into Donál Óg Cusack in the second half as Limerick ran away with the game. With 10 minutes remaining, a handful of Limerick lads were asking me if I had any tips for the coursing in 2022. It was crazy interaction for an All-Ireland final but that’s what we all missed so much in 2020, and for most of 2021.
It was an unusual season because there was so much going on in such a short space of time. The league only concluded two weeks before the Championship began. The new sin-bin/penalty rule took us all a while to get used to — which we never really did.
As a Clareman, one of the low-points was the decision to sin-bin Aidan McCarthy in the Munster semi-final and award a game-changing penalty. Jake Morris was closer to the Ennis road than the goal when McCarthy fouled him and yet James Owens still felt it was a goalscoring opportunity. Even a blind-man could have seen that it wasn’t. The rule may have been brought in with good intention but that was the absolute worst extreme of its application.
The season belonged to Limerick because they had such an iron grip on the Championship. The Munster final was the standout performance because of how they just flipped the trend and pattern of a game that appeared to be running away from them in just a handful of second half minutes.
We can all talk about tactics and gameplans and systems but it’s amazing what a group of players can do when they just decide: ‘Hi, we’re not at it lads, this isn’t good enough, let’s get cracking now.’
Kyle Hayes’ goal provided the most visual metaphor of how a player — and a team — can turn a game inside out from the most unlikely of starting points. The Limerick lads seem to very grounded, but that stems from their manager John Kiely.
Paul Kinnerk is obviously the genius behind the system, but you have to have the right manager to drive the machine to where he thinks it can go.
Kiely doesn’t care about the limelight or his reputation. I knew John long before he ever became successful and he was always a fierce down-to-earth fella. I’d be down in Galbally coursing on New Year’s Day and John would be working behind the bar and just shooting the breeze with lads. You don’t associate that stuff with the top managers but that’s just John.
Some people think leadership is being an authoritarian, ruthless figure who whips the troops into shape with the force of their personality.
But real leaders excel in delegation and John has the humility to trust the people around him and let them get on with their jobs and get the best out of the players.
They just have that joined-up thinking in Limerick now. When I was in my last year with the academy in 2017, we had this initiative where the senior management would come in and liaise and pool ideas together with the underage squads.
Kinnerk asked us — the minor management — once to design a session and he said to us afterwards: ‘Wow, there are two things there that I’m using Tuesday night with the seniors.’ Maybe he didn’t bring them back to the training ground, but everyone in the room felt invested in the same journey together.
That’s the type of people you’re dealing with and they never gave the impression that they were the senior management who thought they were above everyone else. When they spoke to people in underage squads the feedback never smacked of this attitude: ‘This is the way ye should do it.’
The players carry that attitude too. You heard that from Cian Lynch the night he was presented with his Hurler of the Year award at the All-Stars. Unassuming, down-to-earth sound stuff that you know is genuine. That’s the difference.
Limerick are the best team by a distance. They have dominated the last two Championships, but the last two campaigns haven’t been normal seasons, especially the format.
Limerick won this year’s All-Ireland playing four games, against three teams from the same province. In Munster next year, two teams will play four games and their season will be over by early or mid-May. A couple of teams in Leinster will find themselves out of the Championship before May even arrives because the first three rounds in Leinster are fixed for the last three weekends in April.
That might sound ludicrous to many people but I really think we have to embrace the new system by glamourising the club championship more. We’ve already seen some brilliant games in the club championship so the key test going forward is can we make those games more relevant to the wider sporting public later in the year? That will be a real challenge, but I think the potential is there.
With the league starting in late January and the Championship kicking off in April, every team will have to be right at it early. Limerick may be taking time off now, but you can be guaranteed that every other side are working like dogs now to try and take them down.
Not every team is at Limerick’s level, but every team still has something that they feel they can build on in 2022.
Waterford will be banking on the return of Tadgh de Burca and Pauric Mahony and not having to play four gruelling games in 21 days as they had this summer. The fact that Liam Cahill said no to Tipperary and yes to Waterford is even more significant.
